Rare Mummified Ancient Egyptian Head Sells for £20,000 at Auction

A rare mummified paranoiac head was offered for sale in the United Kingdom, the Daily Mail reported.

The auctioned head was looted by a British soldier and sent to the United Kingdom during the years of World War I.

The British newspaper pointed out that this artifact, which was hidden away in a closet for decades, reached a price of about 20,000 pounds sterling.

The newspaper indicated that the head of the stolen mummy was carbon-dated to show that its age dates back to between 800 and 750 BC.

However, the British newspaper reported that the soldier's family kept the Pharaonic head, whose owner's name was not mentioned for a century, inside a glass dome to preserve it, but because some of the family's visitors did not like looking at it, the skull ended up being placed in a closet.

The seller of the plundered pharaonic head said: If it is not sold, I will probably loan it to a museum where it can be displayed anyway.

Matthew Hall, a specialist in archaeological sciences, said that it is very rare to see the head of an Egyptian mummy from the ancient world at a public auction, especially since the piece has such a wonderful view.

Mummification in ancient Egypt, Hull said, involved removing the internal organs of a corpse, drying the body with a mixture of salts, and then wrapping it in a cloth soaked in a solution of plant extracts, oils, and resins.

Translated by Ahmed Moamar